Project Members

Bernard Comrie

A Grammar of Haruai

After a break of over 25 years, Comrie returned to his work on the Haruai language of the Papua New Guinea Highlands. The main product is a grammar of the language, co-authored with John Davies (SIL International). Haruai is interesting not only for its own variations on familiar New Guinea themes (e.g. switch-reference), but also because of its contact with the neighboring but not demonstrably genealogically related language Kobon, leading to shared vocabulary and overall typology accompanied by deep-seated differences in morphology and syntactic detail.